Choices, Direction, and Project Ideas
This week I was challenged to brainstorm a series of project ideas. Praxis is all about project-based learning and project-based skills demonstration, and this will be the first of many of such projects!
Backstory and Brainstorming
For the month of January, we were basically learning how to frame all of our previous life and work experiences in a way that reflects our skills, strengths, and the value that we’ve contributed in various ways over the course of our semi-adult lives. (We, might I add, means myself and my group of peers currently going through the program. You can read about them here.)
This month the plan is to pick a project that showcases our preexisting skills, while also developing other ones and building up working knowledge of certain areas in the process. The point is to choose a project in the role area that we’d like to work in for our apprenticeship.
The key word here is “choose.”
Even though it’s been made abundantly clear that we’re not choosing the next forty years of our lives, and it’s not a once and done commitment, and we’re always free to learn other skills—the “Oh no, a semi-significant, potentially life-altering decision!” alarm bells have been going off in my head since then.
I’ve got so many interests and partially developed skills that it’s hard to decide which area would be the best course of action at this time. My four options through Praxis are as follows: sales, marketing, operations, and technical.
I can cross technical off the list pretty much immediately because I’m not currently a hacker, established graphic designer, or code-writer, and I don’t plan on becoming one anytime soon.
The other options aren’t as straightforward. Marketing? Maybe. Sales? Less enthusing, but doable. Operations? I could see it, but is that The Right Option?! I’m mostly torn between marketing and operations, because my preexisting strengths and skills most closely align with those two areas (as opposed to sales, which is a skill that I need to have, but is definitely not a passion of mine).
The main issue here is that as of right now, I still can’t predict the future. So although I’d rather pick the option that’s going to be the best investment of my resources in the grand scheme of things, I really just need to go with my gut and make the best decision possible given the information available to me at this point.
However, I’m not actually at that decision-making point quite yet. This is just the project brainstorming part of the process for those of you who wanted to see the inner workings of The Mind Of Dana. So, given the fact that I haven’t settled on one area quite yet, my list of project ideas will reflect multiple role areas. The plan is to gain more insight into my strengths and interests as I demonstrate my skills, which will hopefully lead to a well-informed decision when the time comes.
Now. Without further ado, The List.
Potential Project Ideas
1) Write a book.
This is something that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time as a personal project. I’ve always been extremely interested in my heritage and the story of my family, and I’ve wanted to get that story down on paper for almost as long as I can remember. Ever since my grandpa passed away, and I was introduced to the concept of mortality, I’ve been even more determined to record it in a timely manner. So what better way to get it done than to set a goal to write it in a month? It would signal determination, work ethic, writing skills, and the ability to start and finish a momentous task within a set amount of time.
2) Create a podcast or a video series.
This idea was born out of necessity when I considered how overwhelming of a task it would be to complete all the steps of writing a book in one month. Rather than the book being the project, the interviewing/story collection process would be the project. The main idea would be to interview various family members, boil down what was said in order to identify the core theme/common thread that connected all the stories, and then release it as either a podcast or video series. It would be an exercise in taking large amounts of data (in the form of stories) and making it easily digestible to create one cohesive story. It would also demonstrate knowledge of various recording and editing software.
3) Sell myself.
Not quite as alarming as it could potentially sound, the idea behind this was to get practice pitching myself to various businesses with the goal of obtaining meaningful—albeit temporary—work experience, and a paycheck. This idea came from a place of frustration and exasperation at the fact that none of the businesses within my realm of comfort (restaurants, retail, hospitality) were hiring due to January being a relatively slow month in these industries. Hence the idea of finding and reaching out to businesses that actually get busy this time of year (accounting and other financial institutions). I would identify a need, display at least minor knowledge in that area (or even a proven track record of learning new skills quickly), and be willing to get the job done with minor commitment on the employer’s part. It would be amazing practice for life in general, but especially the Praxis model of basically everything.
4) Teach a class/sell a course.
This one’s for my grandma. We got her hooked up with an iPhone quite a few years ago, and despite her initial arguments of “being too old to learn that technological stuff,” she’s since then developed a very firm grasp of the basics of navigating a phone. However, there are countless features and apps that she isn’t using simply because she doesn’t know they’re there, or doesn’t know how to learn how to use them. And she is definitely not the only one in this position. Therefore, the idea would be to teach a class geared to my grandma and her peer group who have some working knowledge of technology, want to learn more, but are unaware of how to do so. This would demonstrate teaching skills, the ability to break down complex subjects into easy-to-understand portions, marketing, sales, production—the list kind of goes on. I could also take it a lot of different directions, which is exciting to think about.
5) Research and regurgitate.
This one is for myself, a year ago, crying in my living room as I tried to teach myself how to create a website/use MailChimp effectively/build a spreadsheet that actually did the math for me. There are obviously countless teaching resources out there, but I was so clueless that I didn’t even know what I didn’t know, and therefore didn’t know how to efficiently learn new concepts without spending hours doing research in the black hole that is the internet. This would probably be a series of blog posts (maybe accompanied by video) that give either an in-depth break down of individual features of one software, or a more general overview of multiple different services. This would demonstrate teaching skills, communication, and working knowledge of various services and software.
Strengths and Skills
Regardless of which project I choose, I firmly believe I’m going to learn more than I can possibly imagine at this point in time. However, I want to be intentional with the skills that I utilize, demonstrate, and develop.
The main skill with whatever direction I go will be communication. Some of the project ideas are more writing-heavy, whereas others are more verbal communication based. I’m excited to use this project as a means of demonstrating my current grasp of these abilities, while all the while honing them in even more.
Each of these projects also has a fairly significant element of planning and preparing. I would like to do this in a very clear, easy-to-follow way to demonstrate my organizational abilities, as well as make it easy for others to do something similar if they so desire.
Lastly, the ability to learn a lot in a short amount of time will be present regardless of the project I choose. I aim to demonstrate this clearly using those handy communication skills. When I decide on a project, I want to write a transparent “before” post outlining exactly what I know/don’t know, and then an “after” post showing the growth that was made in the given area.
That’s about all I’ve got for now. Come back soon to discover the finalist in the project pool and to watch me figure things out as I go. Thanks for listening and goodnight!